PROVENANCE:

Collection of UMC, Taipei

ILLUSTRATED:

Chu Teh-Chun, Galerie Enrico Navarra, Paris, 2000, color illustrated, p. 249

Solo Exhibition of Chu Teh-Chun, The Ueno Royal Museum (catalogue), Tokyo; Thin Chang Corporation, Taipei, 2007, color illustrated, p. 295

Chu Teh-chun once said that the reason why he went into abstract art was not because he had been won over by any theoretical arguments in its favor, but rather because of his experience of viewing free, expressive paintings that overcame the opposition between figurative and abstract painting; these paintings stimulated him, and made him want to attempt something along the same lines. It dawned on him that the goal of abstract painting was to depict those images in one's memory that seem both real and unreal. Inspired by this realization, Chu Teh-chun cast off the shackles of conventional art and threw himself wholeheartedly into this unknown territory.

It was only after taking the plunge into the mysterious world of abstract art that Chu Teh-chun realized that "freedom" means more than just liberation from artistic form; it is also a way of approaching the whole business of artistic creation. He became aware of just how important freedom is in painting, but also of how difficult it is to achieve. Chu was constantly pondering the question of how to prevent his paintings from degenerating into meaningless wild abandon, how to ensure that spiritual inspiration was not accompanied by a loss of "content." In his treatise Mountains and Waters, the Northern Song Dynasty landscape painter Kuo Hsi uses the concepts of the "meaning beyond the landscape" and the "wonder beyond the meaning," suggesting that if the scenery depicted in a landscape painting does not inspire reflection, then it cannot move the viewer, or even the artist, and the work will be empty and meaningless. Over time, an artist internalizes the beautiful scenes they have viewed, the poetry they have read, the music they have heard, and all of their other "cultural" memories; all of this can well up within them at any time, providing a never-exhausted well of inspiration for painting, and being reflected in the paintings that the artist produces (whether consciously or not).

"Rime bleue" a painting that he completed in 1997, Chu Teh-chun uses a diagonal compositional structure, in which an array of royal blue, blue-green, orange and deep black color patches interlace with and overlay one another in layers, streaming down from the top left-hand corner of the canvas to the bottom right corner. Dense orange and cadmium yellow strokes stand erect facing one another; the dramatic contrast between these color tones draws in the viewer's gaze and adds an extra touch of movement and energy to the downward-flowing blue and black patches. Contrasting with the strong, imposing colors and structures in the center of the canvas, brighter, airier blues have been used for the two sides of the painting, with a lightness of touch that resembles the fei bai ("flying white") technique of traditional Chinese ink brush painting, creating an effect similar to that of clouds passing swiftly across the heavens. There seems to be a parallel here with the painting "Solitary Temple Among Snowy Hills," attributed to the Northern Song Dynasty painter Fan K'uan, which uses a similar diagonal composition to portray the majesty of the towering peaks. The serried ranks of individually distinguishable peaks in that painting have been transformed in "Rime bleue" into softer, more poetic brushstrokes and color patches which perfectly match the title of the painting, turning the painting into a polyphonic symphony with a rhythm based on repeated variation.

The strips of color on the sides of the picture that are blocked by the frame seem to hint at the potential for boundless continuation, emphasizing the immensity of the subject matter. The landscape artists of the Song Dynasty divided the viewing angles for viewing mountain scenery into three categories: the "three distances." This work by Chu Teh-chun embodies the visual power of the gao yuan ("high distant") viewing angle, and the spirit that the concept of "distance" was traditionally supposed to embody is clearly and concretely expressed in this painting, creating a perfect marriage of form and spirit. What Chu Teh-chun depicts here may not be a real scene, but it retains the majesty of the gao yuan viewpoint, reflecting potent scenes that must have been retained in the artist's memory. In this painting, the potential for the extension of the imagination ceases to be constrained, and takes on a boundless character. There is linkage here between constantly-changing reality and the foundations of the cosmic life force; within this unlimited space, the potential exists for the liberation of human thought, and for true artistic freedom.

For Chu Teh-chun, the purpose of abstract art need not necessarily be to negate or deny the natural phenomena of the material world. Chu dismantles the opposition between the abstract and the representational; clearly, in his paintings, he is striving to do more than just represent material objects, but rather to embody the traditional Chinese landscape painting concept that it should be possible to "journey" and "reside" within a painting. When an artist uses painting to reflect on a scene from memory, or creates a work inspired by poetry or music, this helps to bring humanity and the world it lives in closer together. It creates spiritual fulfillment and joy, and brings human beings and the external universe into harmony in which there is no distinction between the "self" and the "other"; everything flows together. This is the aesthetic vision that underpins the paintings of Chu Teh-chun – the joining together of Heaven and humanity.